Westministenders: Boris and God Knows what next. (I'm all out of ideas!)

[RedToothBrush]

Still a week until Stoke and Copeland. (Labour Hold/Con Gain unless something strange happens) QT is from Stoke next week.

A50 hits the Lords next week. Melania is being lined up to do something for the women. (God help us all).

Will UKIP survive? Will Nuttall survive? Will Labour survive? Will Trump survive? Will CNN survive? Will the Lords survive? Will Theresa May survive a class room of children?

All these questions and more

Maybe Tony wants his old job back. Good luck with that. JC will beat him hands down.

Betting odds on the Conservatives have crashed today for the Stoke By-Election.

Cons now 12/1 with Ladbrooks. They have been about 40/1 all week. This puts them ahead of the LDs now. The odds have drifted right out on the LDs. Cons now third and LDs fourth (previously the other way around).

With the amount of money put on UKIP and Labour:

Mike Smithson ‏*@MSmithsonPB*

58% of total bets and 67% of the money gambled with Hills on Stoke Central has been on Ukip. LAB's attracted 17% and 25% respectively.

The shift of money going on to the Cons is big. The bookies are nervously protecting themselves because someone just put a lot of money on the Cons.

I can't think of a particular reason today why there has been a big shift either...

A Con victory, isn't something I've really considered too seriously to be honest. I'd kind of written it off, even though its doable. I'm thinking perhaps I shouldn't have.

A double Con win would be a very very bad thing.

On the subject of furniture, I recall Gove had to repay £7000 expenses he spent on furnishing his second home, a third of which from Oka. I don't know why that made me laugh.

Around a third of the £7,000 was spent at Oka, an upmarket interior design company established by Lady Annabel Astor, Mr Cameron’s mother-in-law.

Mr Gove, the shadow Schools secretary, bought a £331 Chinon armchair from there, as well as a Manchu cabinet for £493 and a pair of elephant lamps for £134,50

He also claimed for a £750 Loire table – although the Commons’ authorities only allowed him to claim £600 – a birch Camargue chair worth £432 and a birdcage coffee table for £238.50.

link

This would probably mean finding some way to promote and expand education in the most middle class but not elsewhere.

Hence the push towards grammar schools. This might play well in Oxfordshire, not amongst Comprehensive parents, but with those that pay for private schools - or the second rung down of private school, saving about £12K a year per child. With just a few token bright working class children to pretend that they are promoting social mobility, but are really keeping the standards up.

This is probably why May made a point about the hard working just getting by.

I don't think this is coming from May - I am not convinced, despite her Oxford degree that she has the understanding of society to dream this up herself.

Peregina, perhaps. I also think May has a bit of a problem with culture itself. If you are absorbing culture then you are not working type thing. May has a reputation for not socialising and not involving herself within London life. Her background is strongly Church of England. I wonder if there is an element of 'the devil makes work for idle hands' protestant ideology going on in there too.

JK Rowling posted this earlier today. Another left field idea but one relevant to the young. This rings true to me (I'm a nerd was close to the gamer culture in my youth and know people it applies. For some time I adopted a male online persona to avoid some of this crap). I'm sure a lot of it won't be of interest to most and not everyone will get it, but in the context of MN which has been something of a target for this kind of abuse - as well as female MPs, I think it is worth putting here.

DH has also been struggling with this idea of 'providing for the family', that is talked about in the article, as an expectation from society of late. He's daft, as I don't ask or expect him to but he says he still feels this social pressure all the same. He's a proper hipster type but I recognise and see where some of these cultural ideas have hit him all the same. He's generally more liberal and left wing than I am.

J.K. Rowling ‏*@jk*_rowling

A fascinating long read: as sad as it's troubling and full of hard truths for the left.

medium.com/@DaleBeran/4chan-the-skeleton-key-to-the-rise-of-trump-624e7cb798cb#.7p2tavbva
4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise ofTrump
Trump’s younger supporters know he’s an incompetent joke; in fact, that’s why they support him.

Culture, education - there's the danger of new ideas and independent thinking coming in
Especially as some of that elite culture involves foreigners

Councils will be putting up council tax by 5% to pay for elderly social care
According to the bbc
Council tax to rise while services cut, says LGA
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38982643

Food for thought re immigrant workers...
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-economy-would-take-a-328m-hit-if-all-migrant-workers-stayed-at-home-for-a-day-new-research-says-a7588766.html

Trump’s younger supporters know he’s an incompetent joke; in fact, that’s why they support him..........
Splendid essay. What I'd suspected.

Potential conservative double win.( has some one's palm been greased?)
Having control of the press for 3/4 decades brings its benefits. Blair won in '97 as an insurgent.

The Guardian has produced a set of tables that show the priorities of each EU27 country going into negotiations with the UK. It's quite a mixed bag and you'd need someone with finer honed people-reading skills than May or Davis to navigate their way through the cracks.

negotiators will have to agree on the divorce settlement at a rate of 40 legal measures per day.

On a 10 hour working day, a new legal measure passed every 20 minutes?

RTB absolutely fascinating Medium article about 4chan, thanks

Yes it is really good. I see JK Rowling is getting all kinds of crap on Twitter for posting it. To be expected I suppose.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/20/tony-blair-brexit
From this premise follows a sense of responsibility, deepened by a new sense of pessimism. As he said on Friday, “for the first time in my adult life” it is no longer obvious that liberty, democracy and the rule of law are secure

Was going to edit out 'pessimism' because that's illegal under new elitist protocol, but then thought fuck it, in for a meatball etc.

"It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what"
Atticus Finch.

Radio 4 feedback programme had a piece in which listener complained about pro Le Pen bias of news bulletins. News editor sounded distinctly uncomfortable when asked if he'd been fooled into promoting fascism.
‏*@BBCR4Feedback* Feb 17
What do you think of the #FrenchElection coverage? Some say #BBC quote too much from one candidate; #LePen. #Listen bbc.in/2lqcAe

Is Trump being set up by the security services or is he really this dim?

As for nice remainers, I am not one of them either.

It gives me visions of the people writing the report, doing so in code so other people on the team don't know some of the data, so its all covert until the second Corbyn opens it

The problem (in more ways than one, if you think about it) is that image already belongs in the Monty Python skit about "the funniest joke in the world", at which point the universe will implode under the weight of irony ....

I think the truth is that Trump always has been stupid or is suffering from the early stages of dementia. He cannot string a coherent sentence together.

I have no doubt he was referring to the Fox News programme on Sweden but didn't include the crucial point that "last night" was the time of a TV broadcast, not an actual event.

From a book review of Mick Hume's "Revolting" - "call me old fashioned, but if you are going to write a book about the establishment, it might be helpful to know who is in it. Otherwise the suspicion arises that it might just mean "people who are slightly famous and disagree with me.""

Drifting slightly OT, did anyone watch "SS GB" last night. (As a fan of the book, I'm waiting to binge watch).

Back on topic, @MichaelMoran tweeted:

I enjoyed #SSGB quite a lot but it needed more people going around telling the resistance fighters that they lost & they should get over it.

I'm not surprised that JK Rowling is getting shit. Nature of the beast.

Poor problems for Paul Nuttalls of the UKIPs. Of a practical nature. Several senior UKIP official from his Liverpool branch have quit the party over his Hillsborough remarks.

Somewhat unsurprisingly.

You were right about Scousers and Nuttall.

Full press statement from the two Ukip chairmen resigning over Nuttall

Here is the full statement put out on behalf of Stuart Monkcom and Adam Heatherington, the two Ukip chairmen who have resigned from the party in protest over Paul Nuttall’s “false claims and insensitivity regarding Hillsborough”, as they put it.
www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2017/feb/20/paul-nuttall-ukip-chairmen-quit-in-protest-over-paul-nuttalls-hillsborough-falsehoold-politics-live

I watched it! With my Leave-supporting grandfather who was a child during WW2.

Didn't a commentator describe the Stoke election as Ukip's to throw away? It looks like Nuttall has shot it out of a cannon and smashed it into a thousand pieces. The only explanation for his constant lying is that he is a fantasist and can't tell when he is making something up or not. Call me old-fashioned but when MPs are lying, I like them to be covering up a scandal or massaging figures not just having little daydreams about their CVs/being centre-stage in national tragedies. A little more House of Cards, a little less Walter Mitty, please.